AMAZING STORY

Martez & Woodrina Layton: A Blessed Affair

By Rod Thomas
The 700 Club

CBN.com -One night, Martez Layton was awakened from a deep sleep by a frightening dream. “The Lord simply let me know in my heart, ‘Woodrina’s having an affair and it’s about to become sexual.’”

For years, Martez had neglected his wife Woodrina, and now, she was in another man’s arms. He remembers the experience. “There was pain. So there was crying. There were tears. And I just remember just crying out to God, ‘I don’t want to lose my family.’”

Martez was in the Navy when he met Woodrina. They married and started a family. But when he was sent to Panama, the loneliness of being away from his family was tough. “You don’t have your wife in the bed with you. You don’t wake up and see your kid. You know, you’re in a new place and you’re by yourself and you’re thousands of miles away from each other. It was challenging.”

Eventually, he let his guard down. He had an affair with a local woman. He remembers the inner struggle. “That was the fight inside of me. ‘Do you stop? Or do you keep going?’ And I gave in. You’re having fun, but then on the inside you know what it’s doing to you and what it’s doing to your future.” He ended the relationship after two months. But the guilt of his betrayal drove Martez to his knees. He cried out to God for forgiveness. “I went on my knees and just asked God to forgive me and not destroy my family, not allow my son to grow up without his father, not allow my daughter to grow up without me in her life, and I just said, ‘God, please forgive me.’”

Martez never confessed his infidelity to Woodrina. He thought, “Me telling her the truth was never an option. I would probably lose my family and my wife would have had the right to leave. And so I couldn’t take that chance.”

When Martez left the Navy, the couple started a successful dry cleaning business in Florida. For years Martez made many of the family and business decisions without discussing them with his wife. As a result, their marriage suffered. Woodrina remembers, “I really just started feeling like not one with him spiritually. I wasn’t feeling connected with him. I really felt devalued.”

They sold their business, moved to Tennessee and started investing in real estate. Woodrina warned Martez about moving too fast. “She was like, ‘You know, why don’t you just go a little bit slower instead of just trying to spend all the savings that we have?’” And of course, I was still on the ego, ‘It’s me. I know what I’m doing. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’” Martez recalls.

Woodrina knew something was wrong. “Granted, I didn’t understand the business aspect of it, but I’ve got common sense, and I know if we’re spending out all this money, something should be coming in – and it wasn’t.”

When the real estate market crashed in 2006, the family lost everything – their properties and their own home. Woodrina blamed Martez. “At this point I am just like, ‘Okay, I’m done.’ Really, I had said to myself, ‘I’m done.’ I was like, ‘I am done with this marriage. It’s over.’”

She happened to connect with an old boyfriend on the internet. Old feelings arose. “He just caught me in a vulnerable state because I was so broken emotionally and spiritually, so my guards were down. He began to fill all of those voids that I had that I wasn’t receiving from my husband.”

As their emotional affair evolved, Martez started having dreams about his wife and another man. “I just see her, you know, with the person. I really couldn’t see a face, but it was like I knew she wasn’t with me. I knew she was cheating. I woke up and II actually said, ‘I had a dream you were having an affair.’ She just simply said, ‘Oh, you did? Wow! That’s something.’ There was nothing inside of me that would think Woodrina would cheat.”

Woodrina became more disenchanted with her marriage. One week, she went home to visit her sister, but she was also planning to visit her old boyfriend. “I was excited about coming home and seeing him. You know, because we had been talking every day and we were really looking forward to actually seeing each other,” she remembers. That visit took things to another level.

One night while she was gone Martez had another dream encounter with God. Martez remembers that, “It felt like His hands was like, like a scissor cutting me because I felt like I was in an operating room, like my chest was being opened. The Lord simply let me know in my heart, ‘Woodrina’s having an affair and it’s about to become sexual. And now the same grace, the same love, the same forgiveness I showed you in Panama, I need you to forgive her, to love her and show her that same grace.’”

When Woodrina returned home, Martez confronted her about the affair and she confessed her infidelity. He also admitted his affair 13 years earlier. But he told her that he loved her and wanted to work things out. Woodrina was honest with her husband, “I told Martez ‘it’s going to take some time cause I’ve got to heal - because I really don’t like you.’”

Martez continued praying, knowing that God promised to restore their marriage. “It was my decisions that I made financially that caused her to have an affair. But at the same time I had God just reminding me that ‘but all things are possible.’”

They moved their family to Virginia in 2007, and were rebuilding their marriage. But one day, Woodrina told Martez she needed to talk to him. Martez remembers that, “She said, ‘He called me and I went to see him and we had another sexual encounter.’ I mean, I blew up like David banner to the Incredible Hulk. I mean, it just – it got ugly. It got ugly fast. I went and got a suitcase, started packing my suitcase just mad and just saying, ‘I’m out of here. I’m through with you.’ But, when I looked in the mirror and I saw that man of anger and it was like the Spirit of the Lord just came over me and just said, ‘You don’t want your kids growing up without their dad. You’ve got to calm down.’”

Martez knew he knew he could never leave his family, and this time, Woodrina vowed to focus on her marriage and her relationship with God. Martez saw her changing. “I saw her fighting for her family, fighting for her marriage, fighting to come back into right relationship with God, so I knew this was what she wanted. I knew I was what she wanted.”

Then on Easter Sunday in 2008, Woodrina heard a sermon that helped her break the bonds that connected her to her lover. “I began to feel those emotional chains just being broken off of me. After that service I gained strength. I felt the strength of God upon me to be able to finally fight,” she said.

The healing took time, but they feel God has completely restored their marriage. Woodrina puts it this way, “It’s like we just started all over again. Our love for each other is deeper. Our intimacy is deeper. Our spiritual bond and emotional bond with one another is deeper and is stronger now.”

Martez explains what God started that Easter Sunday. “That was like the resurrection of our marriage. So all of those things that had been done, the affairs, all of that hurt, everything was left there on the cross. And on resurrection Sunday, here it is now just as Christ rose, then here we are rising again as a family, as a married couple.”